Movie review: “San Andreas”
“San Andreas” is what I call a summer popcorn movie. Something very different from the art house fare I usually watch (e.g., “Far From the Madding Crowd“). That was reflected in the audience which included a man who fiddled with his phone, making no attempt to shield the screen, at least eight times throughout the film. He was close enough to be annoying but far enough away that I couldn’t discreetly tell him to stop being a self-centered asshole. Too, a lot of the audience applauded at the end. Which made me think these are people who think the TV show “Duck Dynasty” is awesome.
Let me start with the two things about the movie that were good: Paul Giammati’s performance as the scientist and the special effects. Not only was Paul’s performance excellent his character avoided the usual movie scientist cliches. And the CGI special effects were for the most part amazingly realistic and blended extremely well into the live action.
The rest of the movie was a disaster (pun intended). Formulaic. Stocked with the usual disaster movie stereotypes and cardboard cutout characters. No thinking required because you could predict the next scene and each scene required no knowledge of what preceded it.
The opening scene wasn’t just implausible it was downright ludicrous. It portrayed a helicopter (piloted by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s character) descending into canyon narrower in places than the diameter of the helicopter’s rotors. The pilot deals with that by angling the helicopter along its long axis to “side slip” into the canyon. And he did it with a civilian reporter and cameraman onboard. Such ludicrous scenes appeared every few minutes from start to finish. Which is acceptable in a movie like “Avengers: Age of Ultron” or “Mad Max: Fury Road” where you know you’re in a comic book universe (and I thoroughly enjoyed both). In “San Andreas” it just made me chuckle every time it occurred.
I’m damn happy I only paid $5.50 for a Sunday matinee showing. Had I paid $11+ I would be royally pissed.